Hansel and Gretel

After leaving school, my compulsory registration for active military training in South Africa ended soon after the closing date for applications for my year with a post card announcing that I had not been selected by random ballot to serve in the military training, and that I need not keep the DoD advised of my postal and residential address. The DoD was known as the SADF, and later in the New SA, it was known as the SANDF.

That was a long time ago, but my recollection is that I greeted the postcard with a feeling of relief and satisfaction. The anecdotal tales of teenage boys being exposed to the military machine did not paint a particularly rosy picture. Whilst I was ready to concede that the sort of training in discipline and physical fitness given by the DoD would surely be of benefit, I could hardly be expected to look forward with any sort of anticipation to the “meat-end” of soldiering – killing the “enemy”. Not my enemy, but the enemy as defined by your commanding officer.

Right. I would not be expected to kill others, simply because some guy wearing a uniform with some stripes on it, instructs one to do so. I am certain I would never have made much of a murderer. I am thus grateful that the random ballot of 1965 had missed me.

However, I can add that I have never been keen on hurting any living creature, unless I found myself in a situation where it was one of those stuck-in-the-corner-back-to-the-wall “either him or me.”

This morning, whilst sitting on the loo (as you do), I happened to glance down at the dark brown floor next to my bare foot (as you might). I was barely awake, so I needed to re-focus a bit, to make sure that my sight was reliable.

There was a small brown mound, unmoving, next to my big toe. Now, I know what you’re thinking, but no, this looked more like a little creature. Then my eye was drawn to something similar  near my other foot. We’re talking six-thirty and darkness outside, remember.

I prepared two squares of toilet tissue paper by folding each into a small neat square, fairly thick wad. I carefully held the first wad above the first mound next to my left foot, and quickly and accurately pressed the paper cushion down hard over the little creature. Squish.

Then I repeated the process on the other creature with the second wad of toilet tissue paper. Squish. 

And so, before the sun had even started warming our environment, two Vespula germanica had been exterminated. Two German wasps.

I am led to believe that our toilet is such a bountiful store for German wasps, because of the Camellia shrub growing directly outside the window. I dashed out to investigate, and, as sure as wasps are wasps, there one was gorging himself on a feast of pollen in a Camellia bloom.

When we’d first read up a bit on the types of wasp around this part of the world, the children had come up with the phrase “Hansel and Gretel” are flying around in the garden.